The real story about rookie New Democrat MP Lise St-Denis’ latitudinal move among the desks of parliamentary opposition parties isn’t that she quit the NDP, but that she didn’t slot him or herself alongside the tattered remnants of a formerly robust Bloc Quebecois caucus.

As much as Quebec nationalists attempt to downplay the thrashing administered to the BQ by the province’s voters on May 2, the caucus of two remains a stinging rebuke to a party that once boasted the status of Her Majesty’s Official parliamentary Opposition, and came within a decimal point of beginning the process of leading Quebec out of Confederation.

With the Parti Quebecois stumbling, the first NDP parliamentary defection, had it been to the Bloc instead of the tottering Liberals, would have been trumpeted by sovereigntists as a victory.

Immediately following last year’s Bloc Quebecois disaster, I wrote a column pointing out Gilles Duceppe’s dream at the outset of the campaign was “of leading his BQ bomb throwers from the parapets of Stornaway”.

A few days later I passed along a question asked by a sovereigntist: “How long do you think it’s going to be before the ranks of the BQ may become supplemented by defectors from the NDP? Remember”, he added, “Layton’s caucus is populated in large part by Quebecers, including soft nationalists. People exposed to and most comfortable not with Ottawa and the rest of Canada, but with Quebecois thinking and Quebec politics.” He went on to predict NDP parliamentary neophytes would experience seductive lobbying from PQ and BQ supporters.

He may be correct. In fact, I would bet on it. About the seductive lobbying.

Will members of the Quebec NDP caucus eventually defect to the BQ? More than likely; and sooner rather than later I suspect, should Thomas Mulcair receive a particularly nasty drubbing in his chase to succeed Jack Layton as Stornaway’s principal resident.

However, for now, neophyte politician Lise St. Denis abandoning the NDP for the Liberals, is no victory for Bob Rae and perhaps not even a entirely significant loss for New Democrats. It is though a lost bragging opportunity for “le cause”.